Bipolar Disorder Awareness Month – Peter’s Story

February 2nd, 2011

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Peter S K Lynch chronicles his life with bipolar disorder through chapters posted on his semi-autobiographical blog. Peter says:

I’d welcome you to check out my semi-autobiographical account of a young man’s descent into madness. The first chapter is located here:

http://newmanx.blogspot.com/2010/10/chapter-i-sunday.html

Here is an excerpt from the first chapter:

For reasons not quite forthcoming I feel the impulse to create a blog, and even as the thought coagulates in my brain, I hypothesize that I’m not motivated enough to reliably maintain and update it.

I’m well aware, in fact, that lack of motivation is quite possibly my most inhibiting weakness if, of course, you discount the substance abuse, which I do. I have almost boundless potential, I’m sure of it, but my results are almost always disappointing, especially to my parents. Two years ago, I graduated college early with a respectable 3.36 GPA, but my parents knew how little work I’d done, how little time I’d left myself to write papers before their deadlines, and that I spent more time drunk or high than I did on my studies. I only started taking Prozac for my OCD as a sophomore, and my Adderall prescription for the ADHD was not, ironically, started until after college. But, I think, even if I’d been on both from the beginning, I’d still have been eccentric, and I’d still have done drugs, and I’d still have the nagging feeling that I’m not quite alright.

What should I call this blog? I wonder. I think about my favorite anti-heroes: Han Solo; Holden Caulfield; Raoul Duke; Sam Spade; Stephen Dedalus; The Man with No Name. That’s it, I think—The Blog with No Name. I enter the title and save the blog’s formatting.

I check the monitor display: 10:50 pm. Time to get going.

Outside, I take my coiled ear buds out of my left pocket and plug them into the little red IPod Shuffle clasped onto one of my belt loops with my left hand, putting the ear buds in with my right. I hit play, and Neighborhood # 2 (Laika), by Arcade Fire picks up with the line, “Our mother should have just name you Laika!”

I hit skip back to start over from the beginning. The song affects me on a personal level—what gets me is the idea of a mutt sent up into space in an experiment for the furthering of mankind. There’s something of me in it, something of my life, but it’s something I can’t explain.

**If you would like more information about bipolar disorder, please visit http://www.allaboutbipolar.com/types-of-bipolar/